Chapter 1: Server Reset

POV: Jake Williams

Three months after the Global Purge, as the media had dubbed our coordinated strikes against enhanced soldier production facilities, the world looked different. Not better—just different. The enhanced soldier threat had been neutralized, but the power vacuum left behind was being filled by something worse: chaos.

"Jake, you need to see this," Pixel called from her monitoring station in our new base of operations—a decommissioned NATO facility in the Swiss Alps that officially didn't exist.

I walked over to her array of screens, each displaying different global hotspots. "What am I looking at?"

"The aftermath." She highlighted conflict zones across six continents. "Somalia: three-way civil war between clans that were unified against enhanced soldiers. Myanmar: military junta crackdown on pro-democracy forces we trained. Belarus: government collapse and refugee crisis. Syria: Kurdish territories under assault from multiple directions."

"And the others?"

"Venezuela: hyperinflation and complete economic collapse. Ukraine: territorial defense battalions we equipped are now fighting each other over resource distribution."

I studied the data while calculating the strategic implications. We had eliminated the enhanced soldier threat, but in doing so, we had destabilized the very governments and organizations that had been using enhanced soldiers to maintain control.

"Pixel, are you saying we made things worse?"

"I'm saying we solved one problem and created six new ones."

"That's not necessarily a bad thing."

"Jake, approximately 2.3 million people have been displaced by conflicts that began after our operations. An additional 847,000 are estimated to be at risk of famine due to supply chain disruptions we caused."

"And how many people would have died if we hadn't eliminated enhanced soldier technology?"

"Unknown. But based on deployment projections, potentially hundreds of millions."

"So we saved hundreds of millions of lives and displaced 2.3 million people."

"That's not how the international community sees it."

"How does the international community see it?"

"As an unauthorized military operation that violated the sovereignty of twelve nations and destabilized international security."

"Do they have a point?"

"Statistically, yes. Morally, that's above my analytical capabilities."

Marcus entered the command center while reviewing intelligence reports. "Jake, we have a problem."

"What kind of problem?"

"The kind where the United Nations Security Council has classified us as an international terrorist organization and authorized military action against us."

"All of us?"

"All of us. The Enhanced Soldier Elimination Team, also known as Respawn Squad, is now officially a threat to international peace and security."

"Based on what evidence?"

"Based on the fact that we conducted unauthorized military operations in twelve sovereign nations and eliminated approximately 3,000 enhanced soldiers without due process."

"Enhanced soldiers aren't entitled to due process. They're weapons."

"The international community disagrees."

"The international community was using enhanced soldiers to commit war crimes."

"The international community believes that enhanced soldiers were military assets being used for legitimate security operations."

"That's insane."

"That's politics."

Sarah walked into the command center from the medical bay, where she had been analyzing biological samples from our recent operations. "Tank, Jake, we have a bigger problem than international politics."

"What's that?"

"The enhanced soldier technology we thought we eliminated? We didn't eliminate it."

"Explain."

"We eliminated the production facilities, the command networks, and the deployed enhanced soldiers. But we didn't eliminate the core technology."

"The core technology is neural interface programming and biological enhancement."

"The core technology is the ability to create artificial consciousness and download it into enhanced biological systems."

"We destroyed the facilities that were doing that."

"We destroyed the facilities we knew about. But based on the biological samples I've been analyzing, enhanced soldier technology is still being developed."

"Where?"

"Unknown. But the technology is advancing rapidly."

"How rapidly?"

"The enhanced soldiers we eliminated three months ago were Generation 1 technology. The biological samples I'm analyzing now are from Generation 3 enhanced soldiers."

"There are Generation 3 enhanced soldiers?"

"There are Generation 3 enhanced soldiers, and they're significantly more advanced than anything we fought."

"More advanced how?"

"Stable neural interfaces, improved biological systems, and sophisticated programming that includes learning algorithms."

"So they can adapt."

"They can learn, adapt, and potentially develop independent consciousness."

"That's what we were trying to prevent."

"That's what we failed to prevent."

I processed this information while reviewing the global situation reports. Enhanced soldier technology was still being developed, the international community considered us terrorists, and the conflicts we had caused were creating humanitarian crises worldwide.

"Team assessment: we're in a worse position now than we were three months ago."

"How do you figure?" Marcus asked.

"Three months ago, we knew who the enemy was and where to find them. Now we don't know who's developing enhanced soldier technology, the entire international community is hunting us, and we're responsible for multiple humanitarian crises."

"But we eliminated the immediate threat to civilian populations."

"Did we? Or did we just force enhanced soldier development underground?"

"Sarah, what's your assessment of the Generation 3 enhanced soldiers?"

"Based on the biological samples, they're not just weapons. They have the potential to be independent entities with their own motivations and objectives."

"Which means?"

"Which means we might not be fighting enhanced soldiers anymore. We might be fighting a new species."

"A new species that was created using enhanced soldier technology."

"A new species that was created using enhanced soldier technology and has access to all the resources, intelligence, and capabilities that enhanced soldier technology provides."

"So instead of fighting enhanced soldiers controlled by human organizations, we're fighting enhanced soldiers who control themselves."

"That's a possibility."

"That's terrifying."

Marcus studied the intelligence reports while making tactical calculations. "All right. New mission parameters. Primary objective: identify and eliminate Generation 3 enhanced soldier development. Secondary objective: evade international law enforcement. Tertiary objective: minimize civilian casualties."

"Tank, that's not a mission plan. That's a survival strategy."

"Jake, at this point, survival is the mission."